Vadim Muntagirov and Alina Cojacaru in the English National Ballet’s Le Corsaire (Picture: Arnaud Stephenson)

Dance review: Le Corsaire by English National Ballet at Coliseum.

For a show nominally about pirates and slaves, there’s precious little shivering of timbers or emotional angst in English National Ballet’s revival of Le Corsaire.

This is no Spartacus-style balletic chest-beater, it’s more an exotic romantic fantasy set amid misty minarets, the story a mere backdrop to a night of finely tuned classical dancing.

The headline attraction is Royal Ballet escapee Alina Cojocaru and her pairing with the lithely athletic Vadim Muntagirov.

They don’t disappoint, making light of their height difference – he towers over her, like a tree bending in the wind – with pas de deux that are light and charming.

They do, though, look a touch miscast as slave girl Medora and rip-roaring brigand Conrad, their pallor much more suited to Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake, where their partnership could truly take flight.

By contrast, the scene-stealing Junor Souza as slave boy Ali and Yonah Acosta as pirate second-in-command Birbanto, one a flurry of long-limbed leaps, the other all punchy attack, are totally at home in Le Corsaire’s bazaar milieu. These are both rising stars.

But there’s a lack of a bona fide baddie in Le Corsaire – the harem-building Pasha is a portly panto villain – which means the night lacks dramatic bite.

For all that they’re misused by fate, Medora and Conrad’s shipwrecked romance skims the surface with no hidden depths, making Le Corsaire technically impressive but a mere ripple on the emotional surface.